A President To End This Hamster-Wheel Foreign Policy

Today, we  mark the five year anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Despite the protest of millions in the streets in the U.S. and around the world, on March 19, 2003, Americans learned that the military had begun its “shock and awe” campaign against Baghdad.

It is on markers such as these that the nation turns its eyes to the grim tab of war.  Numbers are rattled off by anchors and in articles:  since 2004, 3,990 American troops have been killed in Iraq.  Some 30,000 have been wounded in action.  About 145 others have died of self-inflicted wounds, while 308 foreign troops have also been killed. The number of Iraqis dead? Literally incalculable.

Where some look upon these numbers with horror and disgust, others look at the tragic tab and say “thank you, may I have another.”

One such ambitious soul is John McCain, who does not bat an eye calling for another 100 years of war, another trillion dollars in taxpayer money, and another term of Bush’s failed foreign policy.

While the vast majority of Americans have now joined the chorus of those who were prescient enough to recognize that this war would be an ill-conceived and ill-fated failure, John McCain, President Bush, and other members of the Republican Party (yes, I include our old friend Joe in the mix as well) remain staunch members of that miserable minority which refuses to recognize that, after five years, we are no closer to stabilizing or securing Iraq than we were after the first tanks rolled into Baghdad.

Against the weight of the evidence, against the knowledge of futility, and against the fact that our continued presence in Iraq has only made this nation and its people less secure, this band of individuals continue to insist that “progress” is being made.  Even though Iraqis continue to be blown up in the streets, they maintain that “success” is around the corner. Even though last year was the deadliest year for American troops since this war began, they claim that a “turning point” has been reached.

We are witnessing today the same misdirection and manipulation that led up to that invasion in March of 2003.  The lie that is being sold to the American people today however is not that Iraq is a direct threat to the United States, but that our continued presence in Iraq does not threaten our security.

That is why John McCain and others never mention that terrorism has increased ever year since the invasion.   Tht is why they never remind the American people that our gains in Afghanistan have been nearly reversed as the Taliban reconstitutes itself and thrives in the region. That is why they never mention that last year was the deadliest year for American troops in that county.

We will never hear them refer to the fact that five years of war have resulted in just three of eighteen benchmarks of progress being met.  We will never see them acknowledge that, as Congress continues to appropriate blank checks, untold billions have been stolen or lost in Iraq.  No, we will never hear these facts escape the lips of McCain and company.

Instead, we are treated to myth after lie after misrepresentation.  The facts, just like in 2003, are still being fixed to fit the policy.  Numbers are crunched and presented in such a way as to give a false indicator or “success.”  Goalposts are shifted, endgame is ignored, and all that they offer is “more.”  More excuses, more war.

And more troops.  Part of John McCain’s platform is that “there are simply not enough American forces in Iraq.”  His entire Iraq strategy is a carbon-copy of the president’s “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.”  The only difference?  McCain promises that somehow, someway, he’ll implement it better.  With more troops, more money, and more force.

Where the American people yearn to dig out of Iraq, McCain offers to dig our heels in, to invest more of our heroes and our money in a conflict that, simply put, does not have an American solution.

This cabal is invested in Iraq.  But is not invested in the idea of success or safety but solely in the idea of absolving itself of the incalculable and tragic consequences of its own misaction.  

For them, there is no limit to the amount of blood or billions to be spent chasing the validation of pre-emptive war.  For them, there is no public opinion poll dire enough to run away from the rancid concept of permanent occupation.  For them, there is no conscience loud enough to drown out the voice which calls on them to continue this greatest foreign policy mistake in American history.  Because for these people, for these individuals who have built themselves around the idea of war and who have heralded the concept of war as the solution and not the problem, for them, this war cannot be a mistake.

And so, they call for more.  They use dips in violence to promise progress.  In paradoxical fashion, we are told that the less death is the Iraq, the longer we have to stay.  

Yet, as evidenced by the chart below from icasualties.org, there will always be dips in violence.  Escalations have been tried in the past, and while they offer a temporary respite from the record-breaking number of deaths, the gains are just that — temporary — in the absence of political stability.

In March of 2003, there were 208 wounded in Iraq.  Last month, 215 were wounded. In the six months following the invasion, there were an average of 42.5 deaths per month. In the last six months, the death rate in Iraq for our troops has been 38.7 per month.

We have endured five years of war to find ourselves full circle.  And rather than offer an exit, McCain offers more of the same.  The same strategy — literally — as has failed in Iraq driven by the same outdated and false choice of “victory vs. defeat.”

We are a nation trapped in a tragic cycle of this stubborn  and erroneous “leadership,” a cycle which promises not “success” or “victory,” but the continued sacrifice of American lives at the alter of a war which has already claimed too many and too much of us as a nation.

Many if not most of those dead are from my generation.  They were twenty-somethings who, like me, have lived with this war for 20% of their lifetimes.  

We have lived this war, as a nation, as a family, long enough.

The Iraqis have lived with our hollow promises of “victory” long enough.

We find ourselves on this anniversary, just like on four others, weighing the sharp realization that we have years of war are at our back and on our conscience and that all that lies ahead are years more.  Do we continue futilely trying to escape this five-year cycle of failure?  Or do we simply choose not to?  Do we choose to dig our heels into the quicksands of this foreign policy, or do we step forward towards a more responsible and wise path?

This year, the American people will be able to choose which path to take in the voting booth.  The choice they make will dictate whether we will have this same debate presented to us at the next presidential election.  November’s decision will determine whether, on future anniversaries, we mark a grimmer tab of casualties and chaos, or whether we will mark this day as the day a mistake began that was righted by a nation which chose to take the moral, responsible, and yes, necessary path to end this conflict.  

The American people have the opportunity to make next year’s anniversary like no other, an anniversary where hugs at the airport are greeting soldiers home rather than wishing them well off to war.  

Let us hope that such an opportunity is not squandered.

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